


Dig.

by Atqueinstupracaballum



Category: The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Genre: Dostoevsky made me do it, F/M, Grave Robbers, Hysteria, Kidnapping, M/M, Mental Institutions, Obsession, Post-Canon, Sorry Not Sorry, Unhealthy Relationships, this isn't how threesoms are supposed to work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24705364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atqueinstupracaballum/pseuds/Atqueinstupracaballum
Summary: He was alive. He had breath, no matter how ragged.
Relationships: Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin/Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, Nastasya Filipovna Barashkova/Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, Nastasya Filipovna Barashkova/Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Dig.

Lev Myshkin watched without expression as a man crawled through his sanitorium cell window. Vaguely it occurs to him that he should be surprised, horrified even. Yet he remains perfectly still. The darkly clad, shortish figure slipped smoothly from window sill to floor.

Myshkin had not had visitors in a while. 

"We have met before," Myshkin declared, voice rasped and quiet from disuse.

"Indeed, prince, indeed we have." The roguish looking man smirked at him through the dark, as though he knew the pitiful madman inside and out.

"Your name, sir?" Mouth like cotton, tongue like led, he forced onwards anyway.

"Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin," everything about his manner was ironic. His cheeks were flushed with unmistakable signs of fever and his dark eyes flashed dangerously. He was wearing a scarf of dark green. Myshkin looked at that to avoid his piercing glare.

"Are you aware that you are in a bad way, Lev?" The prince did not answer. Rogozhin laughed one haughty, hysteric, solitary laugh. "A very bad way indeed." he gestured around the small, grey, cold room Myshkin waisted his days away in. "Worse than I, in a certain sense. Nastasya will not be pleased, will she?" Myshkin shook his head. "Well, nevermind it, it will be amended soon."

A day passed after that conversation, another, and yet another, and then he never saw that old sanatorium again.

Was this freedom? Dingy inns, cramped rented rooms. Myshkin was inclined to think so. Peeling wallpaper, rotted out floorboards, cold meals and even colder nights were a drop in the bucket against the rapture searing the indiscernible pocket between dermis and epidermis. He was alive. He was cold, often hungry, often frightful, but he was alive. There was a pulse, even if it beat too loudly some times. He had breath, no matter how ragged.

"Where are we going?" he asked his companion one evening.

"Where else, Lev." smoke chased his words out from his parted lips. Myshkin admired the silhouette of Rogozin as it stood defiant against the grayish light outside the window. "I know you have not forgotten, not really. A man does not forget that." He was right.

"Do you think it will be hard to find her?" he asked another day. A bird chirped overhead, there was cool water running over his bare feet. He liked these walks, though he could not tell if his partner savored them as much as he.

"Yes, that is most likely, but nothing we can not handle." Myshkin nodded, believing every word of it, and leaned into Rogozin.

Was it love? He often thought through that question as he lay next to Rogozin. It was practical that they lay side by side, for the nights were rough and cold and long. Myshkin could not risk anything with his delicate, fitful health. Rogozin was aware of this, and so kept him warm. Often he would stare at Rogozin, unable to do anything else. There was something wild in him. The lines of his face, pale, thin, worn, tired as they were, still spoke of danger passed, of danger to be sought, of danger evermore. there was rebuke and retribution waiting in those cruel black eyes, cold as a Siberian night. He was short, yet every muscle was restless. When his pale, overworked hand raised to stroke Myskins head, or press into his feverish cheek -the skin was soft, he remarked, alive still- it was not actually Rogozin calling the orders. No. it was the muscles, from shoulder to wrist, from wrist to phalanges all pulling and relaxing to reach a goal. Myshkin could have cared less about those muscles and their mechanical reactions and actions. They were merely the container that held what so frightfully captivated him. Laying with him, feeling his frank touches on his skin was like a self-indulgent habit, a forbidden vice routed in one's very marrow, the neurological pathways had been set for it long ago, in times scattered to the wind. Myshkin had only to succumb. And he did, of course he did.

He needed Rogozin. There was no wiggling around that fact, not that he tried to. Rogozin also needed him. They needed each other. Nastasya needed them.

At last, they reached their homelands, Russia, sweet mother Russia.

"How lonely Nastasya must have been." Commented Myshkin as they sat for a small dinner.

"Indeed," responded Rogozin, but seeing how gloomy his princely companion had become at the thought added: "But look, we have come to fix that, you and I. I promised to bring everything to rights, did I not?." This cheered the madman's spirits greatly, a weak, awkward-looking smile stumbling upon his pale face.

The night Rogozhin finally made good on his promise, it was snowing a great deal. Myshkins boots threatened to slip over the ice and slush over the mud, grass, and pathways leading to the graveyard. Rogozin gave him an arm and neck to grasp upon. Tonight was not a night for bruises or broken bones, perhaps tomorrow, or the day after that, but not tonight. Tonight was about her.

Hardly a soul had been to see the grave after it had been set, that much was obvious. Myshkin was upset by this, for the poor girl, in his eyes, had deserved better treatment than this.

"Do you not see it Myshkin. It is of no use. All three of us shall have over trodden graves. We have only one another now. What is a headstone to us, now that we have her?" He thrust one of the shovels he had been carrying into his sick prince's hand. If he said nothing, it was because there was no need, the order was clear. Dig.


End file.
